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UKIP Must Stay

I’m now going to say about Brexit what I used to say about the EU: it is like a Shark – it must keep moving forwards or it will suffocate.

Firstly – don’t panic. We are getting out of the EU in the end because, from now on, every tiny little infringement the EU makes on our liberties, every domestic judgement it strikes out, every fine that is imposed on a fisherman who exceeds his quota – will cause a righteous shitstorm in the press. From now on, everyone knows that the EU has no popular mandate and I know the Commission is far too limp-wristed to do a Czechoslovakia 1968 on us. Furthermore, Brexit has caused the EU to stop moving forward for a bit.

When I worked in Brussels, the Commission (which is invulnerable to public opinion), would occasionally have to touch base with reality by ‘accidentally’ leaking proposals to see how much people protested. If there was no outcry, they’d silently move forward. Looks like Theresa May (who was pro Remain), learns fast. Her first action as Prime Minister has been to appoint these two quislings to her cabinet:

Phillip‘it might take six years to leave’Hammond. No, Phillip – the EU won’t exist in six years. It will be either dead or renamed the ‘Fourth Reich.’

Someone has to heckle May from the sidelines – not because she is testing the waters with some radical appointments here but because, in doing so, she’s giving a future veto to people who obviously think that the UK can and should avoid Brexit. This misapprehension (based solely on the fear, interests and wishful thinking by members of the UK government), will hand the Commission enormous bargaining power. Even respected constitutional experts and eurofederalists like Andrew Duff have gracefully conceded defeat – yet we now see a cabinet packed with quislings determined to see Britain as being in the weaker bargaining position as we pull out.

At least there can be nobody left in Brussels this morning who believes that Brexit won’t really happen. Far out means far out.

Theresa May probably doesn’t really understand the reality of her situation – which means that she’s going to be taken for a ride as she tries on the monkey business (defined as not triggering Article 50 TFEU or repealing the 1972 Communities Act immediately).

Now that May has also sacked Michael Gove (the soundest Brexiteer in there) and John Whittingdale (the first to break ranks with the cabinet to support Brexit), there’s a risk that her ‘testing of the waters’ will squander Britain’s upper hand with the EU that the population has provided for her. Apparently there is going to be a ‘Minister for Brexit’ – as Orwellian an appointment as a ‘minister for gravity.’ The fatalistic assumption that, somehow, we must replace one tangle of unnecessary public interference with another because it looks responsible is only going to create the mould to fit exactly that problem. May might not understand that – but the Machiavellian Eurocrats certainly do – and they will want to make an example out of us by inflicting chaos wherever possible.

It is becoming obvious that the administration in Westminster is going to do everything possible to drag its feet until the final departure or collapse. So, following the appointment of this new cabinet in the UK (which – given the lack of outrage at its first appointments, is going to be pretty solidly Eurofederalist), I have decided that the one-issue UKIP party must now remain a political force in order to keep the show on the road – complaining and chivvying and bullying at every new injustice that spews forth from our unaccountable, unelected leaders in the Berlaymont.

A divided Cabinet is a weak cabinet. It is disgraceful that, just as we have been handed the lead, we should try to lag back behind the great progress of history and be lead.

Now I hand over to BBC Radio 4, where Britain’s greatest living philosopher, Roger Scruton, gives his view on Brexit. (click photo to play)